


A Familiar Set of the Shoulders

by xel



Category: Bleach
Genre: Independent drabbles, Multi, and posted in a flood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 35
Words: 13,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5821288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xel/pseuds/xel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short ficlets, predominantly about the lieutenants, of roughly the same mood. Will occasionally be updated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**1\. A Visitor**

_Izuru and Momo_

* * *

 

"It’s okay,” says Momo, softly, and she runs her hand through Izuru’s hair; his head buried in the crook of her neck. She doesn’t ask what it is. She’s not sure she wants to know at all, they have each their own secrets which they bury like dead things and which haunt them like dead things, too.

Crawling to their beds at night, seeping rancid memories across their pillows. Momo breaths deep in the cool, black air and watches, mesmerized, when the breathe leaves like a white fog against the light of the moon. Izuru’s arms are wrapped around her back, clutching at the fabric there. Momo has never seen him shed a tear, even now. Izuru screams, Izuru bites hard on Shuuhei’s collar bone, drawing blood, Izuru sits fetal position in his office at two in the morning when he should be at home but Izuru does not shed tears.

Momo learns these things slowly, over time, and she loves Izuru on his bad days just like he loves her on the days she wants to rip her heart out of her chest, crying and hating herself for never once hating anyone else.

Life is hard sometimes, Momo learns. It always seemed before that life was only beautiful, but now she knows it is both, neither without the other. She hopes Izuru knows this, thinks he might not, wonders if he even cares. She won’t force it on him.

Momo knows she is crying, now too, her cheeks are cold when the wind brushes against the moisture but she’s not sad. When Izuru pulls away he says thanks quietly but his voice is always unearthly clear. Momo kisses him briefly on the cheek and then opens her door for him, pulling him by the hand off her porch to something less bitter cold. Momo is fire and life and warmth.

“Stay awhile,” she smiles, “I’ll make tea, let’s play a board game.” Izuru will, of course, beat her. The sun will be up in two hours and they will both be awake to see it, but _it’s okay,_ thinks Momo. Whatever it is.


	2. Chapter 2

**2\. The Rock Skipper**

_Izuru and Rose (and Gin)_

* * *

 

Izuru’s hand is clammy around the rock therein. When he throws it, it skirts over the mirrored surface of the lake three times and then disappears somewhere beneath it. Izuru looks at the water, swirling around his ankles and sighs and looks around and then reaches into the water, pulls out another rock, smooth as the surface of a table, flicks his wrist and watches it disappear, too. Everything disappears.

Izuru can feel Gin’s fingers ghost across his shoulder blades, can feel the air chill around him like the coming of something sickly and full of death, but Izuru has been trained to embrace the crawling in his skin the same way he does any other anticipation and it is like wanting, but slightly more subdued, so he turns slower – expecting to see him there, and he’s almost sad when there’s nothing. Not Gin, just a gust of winter wind across his cheeks and everything is cold and everything is gray and the world is solid, but Izuru feels hollow.

He feels like he should repent for all his sins and the sins of his captain, but he doesn’t want to. In some ways it is no more Gin’s fault for being a traitor than it is Soul Society’s fault for not catching him; everything slid along. The whole world is a snake, and everyone in it. Self-serving snakes. Izuru grabs another rock, it skids four times.

He never wants to see his friends get hurt. They don’t deserve it. But Izuru is the husk of something once living which no longer is, and if they bury him under the corpses of other traitors, they’ll be disposing of a body whose soul has already been torn from it.

Izuru’s hands, unoccupied, wrap themselves around his torso, latch on to his biceps, claw into his skin, Izuru wants to die for following the devil to the gates of hell and crying when they wouldn’t let him in. Something in him is worth something and he hates it.

The fingers which ghost across his neck now are warm and feather light.

“It’s cold, Izuru,” says Rose, voice warm. Izuru stares hard, forward, out deep into the lake where the rocks lay and no one will ever find them.

“I wanted to feel cold,” says Izuru, “why else would I be here?”

“For the view, perhaps?” Rose takes his hand, and he leads Izuru back on to dry land, smiling pleasantly at him. “How beautiful.”


	3. Chapter 3

**3\. Outliers**

_Shuuhei and Nanao_

* * *

 

Everything that Shuuhei has ever been, has been a shadow along the path of another.

Sometimes; when he sits alone atop the hills of the great world, expansive and endless in its possibilities, he wonders if he’s not just the result of a hundred other lives. Somewhere along the way he lost his self among ideals of justice and hero worship. He feels tired. Tired and useless and foolish.

Shuuhei picks at the grass at his sides and falls back, heavy, onto the hard earth and watches the way the clouds roll across the blue sky. Soul society’s sky is unearthly in its color - it is like looking at a painting of what a perfect sky should be. The sky is perfect and all the people under it are also perfect. And everyone has a perfect foil. And a perfect idea of what they are and who they are to others. The kenpachi, Zaraki. The healer, Unohana. Izuru’s sword mimics the wielder and neither can bare their own weight so they befriend the woman who cannot be weighed down, Rangiku, whose life and sword slips through the cracks like sand and they are perfect companions. Momo has Captain Hitsugaya, they are fire and ice. The twin sword duo are as old as the shinigami themselves. Everyone has a place, thinks Shuuhei. They all serve a purpose.

Maybe Shuuhei’s purpose will always be to play the pawn. Maybe he will vanish in the history books of a great power and his destiny is not to leave the mark, but to be the stepping stone for the person who will. Somehow, that seems fitting and it only stings half as much as Shuuhei expects it to.

“Good afternoon Hisagi-san,” says Nanao. She is graceful when she sits beside him; she has a book in hand, she pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and she looks at him with a mirrored expression, like she knows every thought in his mind and all of those that have ever been.

“Ise-san,” says Shuuhei and does not sit up. They don’t run together, nor even in the same vicinity though they are roughly the same age. Nanao has been a solider all of her life… Shuuhei has not.

“Ise-san,” says Shuuhei again, several minutes later after her book is open and she has made progress through its first few pages. She glances at him over the rim of her glasses, a question in her eyes and she waits for him to continue, but he falls short.

“You seem like you have a lot on your mind,” says Nanao, saving him.

“Only recently,” Shuuhei admits.

“Would it have been better if I hadn’t intruded on you?” Asks Nanao, not unkind. She dog-ears her book and sets it aside. She is sitting with her legs folded under her and it is an art to maintain such a position for any length of time but she keeps it like a priestess and shows no sign of being bothered.

“It’s hard to intrude on something that isn’t anything,” says Shuuhei. And then, after a pause: “I just wanted distance, sometimes I can’t stand to be in the soul society.” Nanao smiles secretly at him and he nearly misses it.

“It’s the structure of it, isn’t it?” She says. Shuuhei doesn’t know how to respond but Nanao moves forward, to the precipice of their hill and gazes out to the white tower in the far distance. “Sometimes I forget that all of it is just a vast network of military precision. Every solider is a cog and it all moves effortlessly toward a task. I hate it, truthfully.”

“Are you allowed to say that?” Shuuhei grins, joining her at the edge.

“No,” Nanao smiles, “no I don’t think the captains, or other vice captains would think well of it. But I think I know you…” Nanao stops short and looks at him, “ I think everyone comes together just a little too well down there. I don’t often feel as cohesive. I have always been an outlier … Partly by choice,” Nanao admits.

“I think I might be an outlier too,” says Shuuhei, thinking. It feels like there’s no reason to stay and no place to go if he leaves. The world has taken his life and there’s nothing to do with it now but to dwindle it down and pray that someone, anyone, finds worth in him and wants him and wants to know him too. Shuuhei doesn’t want to be a person dependent on other people but he doesn’t know that he can be anything without them. Just a shadow on a path with no shape and form of its own.

“Even so,” says Nanao, saving him again.


	4. Chapter 4

**4\. Rose-Colored Hue**

_Izuru and Rose_

* * *

 

The days bleed, and the days bleed into each other and the sickly-sweet stain of red is vibrant in the sunset sky and in the veins of vessels just barely holding themselves together.

Izuru is drinking too much coffee and sleeping too many hours. He doesn’t pretend to be okay, he’s not particularly not okay, either. When Rose comes to him in the evening to play music Izuru lets it happen around him and it’s … There’s something about the companionship … even when they don’t say a word. Maybe one day, he thinks, maybe one days but maybe not, too.

“Do you like flowers?” Rose asks, his voice is melodic and soothing. If not for the faint pulse of taint that is a hollow, he would evaporate into the essence of softer things; the color of glass, probably. Izuru shrugs noncommittally, because he has never really thought about it much.

“Hmm,” Rose hums, and that’s the end of it. The music Rose plays isn’t soft, usually; it’s generally pretty jarring. At 2 in the morning, the division members throw an egg at Izuru’s window and Rose leaves with a huff, feathers ruffled.

When Izuru sleeps alone in his bed he can almost touch Gin, touching him. It’s a hateful kind of need … Rose would be different, but there’s a friction between the want and the walk away. Izuru likes to hurt without being hurt. A betrayal is a betrayal is a betrayal and Izuru knows that Rose wants the love when he wants everything. Of course he does.

The next morning Izuru wakes up to roses on his doorstep, a ghost of a smile on his lips. The vase is blown glass, sickly sweet strands of red.


	5. Chapter 5

**5\. Ward**

_Kensei and Shuuhei_

* * *

 

‘I just needed to see if I could,’ said Shuuhei, his hands clenched fists at his sides. Kensei’s rage rang silent and volatile; a monster coiled and ready to spring, but he held it back with deep breaths. His brow was furrowed with the effort of it.

'Are you trying to kill yourself, Hisagi?’ Kensei growled, 'I don’t get it. You’ve got all these brains and this raw, stupid talent…’ The muscles of Kensei’s back tensed, as if he might punch something, and then relaxed, ’…you’re fucking reckless.’

'You can’t give me this, captain. _You_ , of all people, can’t tell me I’m reckless,’ said Shuuhei, his voice eerily quiet, his eyes dull and far away.

'I know where to draw the line, kid,’ Kensei bit, 'I know my _limits_.’ Kensei’s shoulders shook with his restraint and Shuuhei would have given an arm, gladly, to be anywhere else. He didn’t want to see his captain, he just wanted … He just …

'I was told you were responsible,’ said Kensei, 'I was told you were hard working, smart and reliable. What happened to you?’

'People change’ said Shuuhei.

'No, I don’t believe that,’ growled Kensei. Shuuhei bit the inside of his cheek to keep from flinching away. 'People change them…’ Kensei looked hard at Shuuhei, his eyes searching, and then he turned his back and walked out of the room and the fourth and the conversation. Shuuhei’s body, taut with defiance, collapsed in spite of him, like a snapped rubber band, and it hurt like hell to slump back into the bed, but it would have been so much worse had Kensei seen.


	6. Chapter 6

 

**6\. Battle of Wills**

_Nanao and Shinken Hakkyōken (and Shunsui)_

* * *

 

If she plays the game, she wonders. If she plays the game and hides the fear and bares the sword and dies. What if she dies? Nanao looks vaguely at the woods around her. Her head aches and her arm is throbbing and blistered to the elbow - a poorly constructed and highly concentrated kido backfired, quite literally, and ate it’s way up her arm, licking the skin with an angry blister as it went. Nanao tries not to concentrate on it too much, there are worse things that could have happened.

Sleeping in the heavy brush of the foliage is also uncomfortable. She has scrapes down her legs from the awkward angles in rest and a gash across her back from where she was thrown into a wait-a-minute bush the other day. Still, when she stands she hides all of this because she is a solider and a good solider does not dwell on things that cannot be changed.

It is that and that alone which stops her from looking over her shoulder too frequently, from thinking of her captain and their squad, hopefully still asleep in the early morning. She has been gone two weeks and she wonders at their vitality - if they are holding together without her. A selfish part of her hopes her absence has made it difficult on them; she hopes she served a purpose in their success. The more reasonable and larger part of her prays that her absence has changed nothing and that they are getting on as they always have.

Her zanpakuto is at her side, in the sash of her hakuma, blunted and useless, stolen from her captain. She runs her hand over it’s silk and curses its curse and then she begins the day.

Left hand raised, right hand on her zanpakuto’s hilt, her eyes light with fire and she calls forth the spirit. He giggles, devilish and muted, but does not come to her. Nanao brings the palm of her left hand to her sternum and sends the lightning kido through her chest, into her spirit, shocking them both. She feels him shudder with the pain of it. Come out, she wills him, but he is resistant. Her hair is down, blowing around her in the breeze. Her glasses are on top of her head, holding her bangs out of her face and her forehead is damp with sweat.

“Come out!” She yells, sending another bolt through them.

* * *

 

Kyoraku is not fairing well. He feels her everywhere. She is using so much spiritual pressure she cannot hide it, so instead she has dispersed it. He is so attuned to her that he can’t ignore it, and he doesn’t want to. She is coming at him from all directions, he can’t pin point her but he can feel her pain like a tack puncturing a single nerve in his mind. It is maddening.

“She knows her limits,” Ukitake says kindly, but there is a waver in his voice like he isn’t so sure himself, which is almost worse than if he had said nothing at all.

“I’m not worried that she doesn’t know them,” Kyoraku says, “I’m worried she doesn’t care about them.” He takes a pull of wine and tries to be relaxed. After all, it is a beautiful day.


	7. Chapter 7

**7\. New Year**

_Shuuhei, Kensei, Mashiro, Rose and Izuru._

* * *

 

Shuuhei sits, cross legged on the precipice of another life, drinking sake from a thermos, waiting for fireworks. Mashiro is babbling to Captain Muguruma behind him about gifts and their friends in the world of the living. Part of Shuuhei feels like he is always intruding on them. Their past, which he can never truly know, is tattooed on his cheek – the same symbol for two completely different histories. It is Shuuhei’s world too, rubbing against theirs, like parodies of each other. Shuuhei takes a sip from the thermos. His hand twitches at his side, as if to rise and run calloused fingers over his cheek and the number there. Shuuhei knows it is devotion for Kensei - for his division and his fate, intertwined in it. For Shuuhei, it is a reminder of life and of fear and of a smile. The scars for the friends whose lives he could not save; the tattoo for the man who saved his.

Izuru is quiet when he walks (and when he talks, when he sits in his chair at his office, when he _is_ and when he _does_.) He is on his knees, next to Shuuhei only seconds after Shuuhei realizes that he has arrived at all. Shuuhei looks at him; turns to see that Izuru’s captain is talking to his.

“What a shitty year,” Izuru says, an echo of feeling in his tone, he is looking out over the cliff and the Soul Society, covered in snow and glowing faintly with festive lights.

“Where did you come from?” Shuuhei replies, a grin on his lips. Izuru is … Izuru is something else entirely.

“Bed,” Izuru says, his features are pleasantly blank but Shuuhei can hear the quip in his voice, “Captain Otoribashi told me that it would be a crying shame to miss something as beautiful as a fireworks show in favor of sleep.”

Shuuhei knows that this is a direct quote and says nothing else.

Izuru sleeps too much, Shuuhei barely sleeps at all and they do not talk about it. There is nothing to live for, there is nothing to die for, it is a cycle: of life and death, sleep and consciousness, but there are people who care about them both and people they care about and on good days, Izuru is snarky and intimate and awake. On good days Shuuhei can sleep for eight hours, go to work, cook dinner and smile. (On good days Momo drags them both out into the sun and talks and wants to be talked to and Renji beats the living hell out of trees in the distance and gets the shit beat out of him by Ikkaku and Rangiku laughs at everyone’s jokes, even Shuuhei’s.)

“Sour pusses,” Mashiro whines, popping up between their shoulders, she is loud but not unwanted. “You better smile when the fireworks start,” she says, poking Shuuhei pointedly in the chest, “even if you don’t mean it!” She turns suddenly, to Captain Muguruma and yells: “you too!” Rose, beside Kensei, chuckles into his hand and the sound is musical, carried across the green expanse of their cliff ledge. Shuuhei notices Izuru’s eyes flicker briefly to the side, as if he is trying to avoid it. Kensei looks about ready to burst, his mouth opened for verbal assault, when the first pop resonates like a canon in the empty space. Izuru turns first, a smooth, decisive motion. Shuuhei watches him, watches the colorful lights of the fireworks explode in muted colors across his face; green and blue and yellow. The entire year is there, written across his eyes, and is leaving just the same. It is nothing at all; just a distant, miserable memory. The allusion of a fresh start is enticing, Shuuhei feels it like a weight lifted. Izuru catches him out of the corner of his eye, lips lifted in something that is almost a smile, and looks back to the sky. Shuuhei follows his lead; wide-eyed with wonder.

“I’ve missed Kukaku’s firework displays,” says Rose, pleasantly. He comes to Izuru’s side and stays there, and smiles freely into the expanse. Shuuhei wonders if Rose is as bothered by the last one hundred years as Kensei is. Shuuhei can’t see it or feel it. Kensei wears his emotions of his sleeve and he is easy to read and this is good for Shuuhei, who has always taken everything at face value. Izuru would know, but he doesn’t talk about his captain like Shuuhei does, the two say a lot when they don’t say anything at all; Shuuhei hasn’t heard anything above a conversational tone exit either of their months in the presence of the other. From behind Shuuhei, Kensei grunts in acknowledgement.

The fireworks pop and vanish and pop and vanish, filling the sky and the snow below with color, Shuuhei couldn’t look away if he wanted. There is something warm and wet on his cheek.

“A happy new year~” Mashiro sings, kissing Shuuhei first and then Izuru and then Rose. Kensei glares hard and with what could easily be misinterpreted as hatred, but which is actually affections as Mashrio whispers quietly “pervert” and does not kiss him.

Shuuhei is not brave enough to kiss him instead, not brave enough to play it off, but he wishes he were; wishes he could … Instead he chuckles lightly and smiles for his captain, who has given him the world, feels the way their futures are slowly becoming the same, and wishes for the moment to last and to never end.


	8. Chapter 8

**8\. Give it a Day**

_Shinji and Momo_

* * *

 

Momo is twice as sweet as the fruit which shares her name. Shinji wraps an arm around her shoulder as they walk, she’s told him this is okay, but she still twitches a little and he can tell her first instinct is to recoil. It might not have always been that way. It’s possible that Momo was an entirely different person before the catastrophe that was Aizen. But the again, maybe the essence of a person is immovable. After all, Shinji himself has only changed in how he approaches the world, and not necessarily how he approaches himself. Momo is probably just the same. He flashes her a toothy smile, gives a light squeeze and then drops his arm.

“Good morning, captain,” says Momo, politely, she smiles but her eyes are unsteady and flashing like she’s not quite awake.

“Mornin’, vice-captain,” says Shinji, “you’re runnin’ a bit late, aren’t ya?” He grins when she squeaks.

“Well, I was helping Izuru with something,” trails Momo, “I was going to work through lunch to make up the lost time.”

Momo watches her captain closely and bites her lip when his smile falls into something like a frown … If not for the fact that his teeth are still showing. They are always showing. Momo has had dreams of dark corridors where all she sees is the teeth of this captain’s smile and  all she hears is the bitter laugh of the previous one, but they’re just dreams and Captain Hirako has been nothing but kind, if not ridiculous and a bit unusual… Characteristics which are, at this point, basic features of all the vizards.

“Why would'ya do that?” Her captain asks, he looks genuinely confused and Momo is confused for it.

“To make up for the lost time?” Momo says, unsure. And then her captain stops and she turns to face him.

A long, uncomfortable pause follows them before captain Hirako lets out a laugh; short and maybe a little condescending but Momo has lived her whole life proving people wrong and these types of laughs do not bother her anymore. “A good vice-captain wouldn’t leave her work unfinished!” She says.

“I don’ know about that,” Shinji mumbles, “I know some pretty good vice-captains that barely do any work at all…” Without either of them saying so, Momo knows that they are both thinking of Rangiku. He gives her a wink and she laughs faintly and when they continue walking Momo feels less like she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

At noon, captain Hirako locks the office and wanders off before Momo can ask him for the keys back in. She’s not naive enough to believe it is an unintentional move, but she’s fairly certain that if she asked for them back, he’d give in. Momo has been told by Rangiku that captain Hirako doesn’t know how to act around her, apparently she is not as brash as he’s used to and he hasn’t quite figured out an approach to her. This is better for her because it puts them on an even playing ground and right now, Momo will take every advantage she can get.

Momo is also a little more on top of things than captain Hirako gives her credit for and after she jiggles the door nob once more for good measure, she walks to the reception desk and to their fifth seat and asks for the papers she gave him earlier. The fifth seat gives them over with a formal bow.

Momo doesn’t need Captain Hirako’s unwavering interest, nor does she love his suspicions. She can feel his eyes on her, unyielding and open, he is probably trying to see if he can make her uncomfortable. She wonders which will be more incriminating: to be unbothered by it at all, or to be too bothered by it. She feels like she is always being tested.

It’s unfair though, to accuse him when she has kept him at arms length on everything. It’s visible in their company’s resent fissure; those who have accepted Captain Hirako and those who have sworn they will protect Momo.

Momo knows that she isn’t a solider because she’s high on honor and morality, even when she is. The truth it, honor and morality make for a poor solider. She has seen the effectiveness of cruelty and precision, she cannot be that person, but she is still a solider for whatever reasons make her a good one (cunning, Nanao says, genius, Kira tells her), and she does not want to be protected. It’s her job to serve, and her pleasure to protect what is precious. She has talked to her company without Captain Hirako’s presence in the morning, to tell them that she is a big girl and that they should always take pride in their captain, until circumstances prove otherwise. They listen to her because they love her, and they know she is worth listening to.

If it is protectiveness for their vice-captain which will make them listen to her, Momo knows that it is just a good reason as any. It is politics, in a way … and she wants to like the captain, too. She wants the company to be a family again.

Momo stops writing because her hand is shaking. The wind in the courtyard is lessened by its walls, but the papers around her still flap a little under the rock she has placed over them. The form in her lap, held stationary by a clipboard, has drops of something watery on them. Momo sets her pen down so she can touch her cheek and she is surprised that she is crying. It happens sometimes, usually when she is asleep. Lately, when she daydreams, it sneaks out too, like her soul demands to have an audience to its pain.

“Oh look,” Captain Hirako calls, Momo brushes away any remnants of water and glances up to see her captain swaggering across the courtyard, “a peach!” he grins and it is comforting and disconcerting at once. When he’s close enough, he bends at the waist like a straw and his face is almost even with hers despite still standing. “You cover all of your bases,” he observes, his eyes scanning her paperwork.   
“I didn’t mean to disobey you,” says Momo, her voice doesn’t waver at all, “but I have some paperwork that needs to get done today.”

“If I got upset overtime someone disobeyed me,” Shinji says, his smiles wider now, it looks almost painful in its intensity, “I’d have died of an aneurysm a century ago.”

“That sounds really painful,” Momo smiles.

“Yeah,” says Shinji, “mostly in my ass.” His smile drops as if remembering something. Momo thinks he’s probably got a thousand stories about the vizards. One day, she’d like to hear them. For a moment he watches her again, and she gets that feeling, like he’s waiting for her to stab him, but then he stands again. Towering and lanky and almost goofy.

“Do you like music, Momo?” he asks, suddenly. Momo is feeling off kilter.

“I guess,” she says quietly, remembering. “Aizen-taichou used to play music in the office sometimes … really quite stuff, he said it would help us stay focused.” She wants to drop the honorific but she can’t just yet and she is not ashamed, even when Shinji flashes her a look that is almost disapproving, or at least as close as he’s likely to get to it.

“Aizen had really shitty taste,” he gags, “I’m talking about real music, Ella Fitzgerald?” he asks hopefully, Momo says nothing and Shinji looks personally offended. “Let’s go dacin’ then, we’ll call it training.”

“I don’t think the captain commander will approve,” Momo says. Captain Hirako winks.

“The cap’n commander owes me 150 years of debt, so I don’t care.” He offers her a hand and Momo takes it, after gathering all of her paperwork.

Momo feels his hollow through his skin, nasty and evil and simmering, wrapped in his own spiritual pressure kept at bay by training and it cannot touch him, even when it is him. Momo knows he can feel her too, the hurt and distress and hope just under the tips of her fingers, he’s watching her and feeling for it at the same time. It is the first time she does not think he is waiting for her to betray him, and it is the first time she does not feel betrayed in her own way.

She’d like to feel him out like this, palms pressed together between corny jokes and music history. Captain Hirako knows jazz like it his name and Momo knows how to be sweet in the realest way. Dancing might be fun.


	9. Chapter 9

**9\. Dead Man Walking**

_Izuru_

* * *

 

Izuru doesn’t sleep anymore. That’s not the real problem, but sometimes it feels like it’s the only problem there is. Izuru doesn’t sleep because apathy eats him. 

Izuru doesn’t sleep because the rats of the past have made a nest of straw and used syringes somewhere in the cavity of a hollowed chest that was probably his at some point. It’s just a thing now. The hand, the body, the mind, just things — used and neglected and overlooked. At one point, a million years ago, Izuru would have done anything to ensure he lived. _One more day._ He remembers thinking it: one more day, he remembers the plea. The same plea every night, like a prayer but much more desperate and to no one but himself, a long, long time ago. Every night. It was clockwork.

Who will fight but the desperately vital? Heart lines on a monitor; Shuuhei, Momo, Renji, the captains, all breathing all thinking. They’ll make it. 

When Izuru moves his arm it scrapes against itself and the sound is enough to make a person cringe but he does it again, and again and again, feeling nothing at all. So he’s not a person and he’s not a monster and he’s not … what? If a person is what he isn’t then what?

Izuru doesn’t sleep anymore because Mayuri wills it that way. What creation sleeps? Izuru doesn’t sleep anymore because the heart doesn’t need the break, because the skin won’t heal, Izuru doesn’t sleep because he is a dead man, walking into a battle field to fight a fight that’s no longer his. 

_If there is a god, it will kill him._

And if there isn’t, it will feel the way dying feels a thousand times and every time will be the ecstasy of anticipation.


	10. Chapter 10

**10\. Quiet Moments**

_Rose and Izuru_

* * *

 

Rose runs his thumb across the high bone of Izuru’s cheek - where the rough skin of the cheek meets the soft skin of the under eye, purple with a lack of sleep and too much sleep. Izuru is watching him with something that is not disinterest and Rose gives him a fond smile for it before dropping his hand. The street is quiet and tranquil but Izuru can feel the hollow there, nasty, grotesque, everything that Rose is not. Izuru is not ungrateful for Rose, but he wishes it were the hollow instead. Hollows think less and Rose has such an inquisitive mind … Izuru curls his hand at his side and squeezes tight enough for his short nails to bite the flesh there. What could Rose do to him, he wonders. What would Rose stop him from doing.

Rose is a delicate kind of touchy and he comes at Izuru in grand and open gestures, half expecting Izuru to stop him, and always half surprised when he doesn’t. Rose gets the sense that Izuru cares very little for intervention. Rose gets the sense that Izuru would let the world burn around him if no order directed him to stop it. Rose gets the sense that Izuru would let the world burn _him_ , and it’s not a comforting thought at all.


	11. Chapter 11

**11\. Swan Song**

_Shuuhei and Kazeshini  
_

* * *

 

 _The battle is over_ , Shuuhei thinks, and, _the battle has only just begun._

It’s been awhile since Shuuhei has seen this place; but these things never change. It’s just a field of brown grass and a chasm that has no end, and a full moon. It’s just a silence and a slicing, raging wind. It’s just a shadow that seems to drip upward out of the ground like some liquid taking shape. It is always iridescently bright and still so dark.

“Kazeshini?” Shuuhei calls to the shadow. It sniggers at him. It is only teeth, sharp and white. “Why am I here?”

“Why _are_ you here, partner?” purrs Kazeshini, “you never come when I call you.”

Shuuhei does not respond and the teeth curl and twist like they are smiling and the shadowy liquid approaches and wraps around Shuuhei and then slinks past Shuuhei and Shuuhei turns to it because he has learned. He has learned to never keep his back to the enemy.

 _“Muguruma-taichou!”_ the wind around them screams. The sound is so sharp it slices Shuuhei’s bicep and blood wells up and flows easily down his arm. Kazeshini sniggers again.

“Figures that it would be another taichou,” he says, “the first one says,” and here Kazeshini’s voice turns mocking and pitched “‘fear your sword Hisagi-san!’ and the second one says,” and then the voice gets laughably deep, “'embrace your spirit, kid!’”

“Kazeshini-” Shuuhei warns.

“And you, dull and unimaginative, follow every order like a little puppy dog … Or a good solider? You are such a fine solider, Shuuhei, all pampered and ready for death; I’m so proud of you!”

Shuuhei can feel the bitterness of his words in the wind, but says nothing because they share no secrets. Kazeshini knows everything Shuuhei has ever thought. It makes it easier to torture him.

 _“And I was thinking swan song,”_ whispers Kazeshini, _“and I was thinking maybe I’ll die, and I was think what could be better? And I was thinking it couldn’t be worse._ ”

Shuuhei flinches at the echo of thoughts and Kazeshini sees it and enjoys it.

“You always get so solemn in hospital beds. You really thought you would die at the hands of Tousen?” Kazeshini cackles, and the sharp teeth open as if to bite and they clack together, imitating clanking bones, “You’ll never die,” the teeth smile. “Shuuhei, you’ll live forever.”

 _“I need you,”_ the wind whispers, _“it’s just the two of us~”_

“I need bankai,” Shuuhei says.

“I’ll give you whatever you want,” says Kazeshini. His tongue slinks out of the shadows and licks his teeth, “I’ll never deny you,” he purrs.

“What is it?” Shuuhei asks, there’s a quiver in his voice that is like fear.

“It’s beautiful, _partner_ ,” Kazeshini smiles, “everyone will die.”

 _“And then it’ll be just you and me,”_ sings the wind.


	12. Chapter 12

  **12\. The Art of Decay**

_Izuru (and Rose and Gin)  
_

* * *

 

It is hellish for Izuru to wait for the day when the world will collapse and shatter around him. Even Rose, who plays beautifully and speaks beautifully, cannot possibly fix the crumbling remains of reality. _It hurts_ to miss Gin. It is agonizing to wish for him to return and to know how maddening unhealthy it is and then also to not give a fuck. It is dependency and it is addiction and Izuru can’t make it go away when he claws at his thighs until they bruise - long and angry and evident - can’t stop thinking about his life; can’t smile, can’t cry. Izuru can not–

He is not even sure what he _can_ do anymore. Everything has the odd sensation of being chalky - hard to touch and repulsive. So Izuru sleeps a lot and Izuru has days where he does not leave his bed and he has made murals in his mind on the white walls of a sterile home waiting for the pain to pass, hoping it never leaves. This is what it is like to ache for the demented and the cruel; and perhaps it is what dying can be like too. A slow decay and withering away.


	13. Chapter 13

  **13\. Stagnant**

_Shuuhei (and Izuru)_

* * *

 

It’s not necessarily that Hisagi is afraid. He comes out of his nightmares eerily still, his fingers knitted over his stomach, looking up at the sterile, white ceiling. It’s easy to be swept up in fear, to be controlled by the demons in the walls, the flesh, they walk along beside him, invisible to everyone else … But Hisagi - Hisagi sees everything.

The world is all very still, even with a flurry of people and things, it doesn’t move much. He noticed when he murdered his captain, Tousen, the air only moved when Kazeshini moved it, the ground was still, the trees were still. Even Muguruma taichou, across the battlefield was nothing at all – a silent blur of action against a stagnant earth.

Izuru knows it best, his world has slowed so much that he only recognizes a thing, now, after it’s happened. A crow out his window is only a crow when the memory of that crow reminds him. He’s missed something … Again. Rose puts a hand on his shoulder, for comfort, but Izuru only feels the warmth of the action in the wake of Rose’s departure, so it is nostalgia before it was ever happiness.

It’s not necessarily that Hisagi is afraid … It’s like trying to remember what fear means.


	14. Chapter 14

**14\. The Memory of Men**

_Shuuhei (and Tousen)_

* * *

 

A lot of Shuuhei is glad that Captain Tousen is dead, hard as it is; as much as it hurts.

Shuuhei can start saying Captain again, Shuuhei can tell his new recruits the merit of justice, no matter how misguided. Captain Tousen is the image of a twisted ivy, searching for light, choking a tree to do so. It’s better to idolize the dead - who can not argue on their own behalf. Shuuhei knows, as Rangiku knows, as Izuru knows. Forgiveness is easier given to a headstone.

Poor Momo, who will endure the sins of her captain until long after they are both dead, eaten alive by her inability to understand the demon who she loved.

Captain Tousen, Captain Ichimaru … Aizen the traitor.

Shuuhei is glad that Captain Tousen is dead. Hate the murderer, not the murdered. Shuuhei is glad that Captain Tousen is dead.


	15. Chapter 15

**15\. Friendly Fights**

_Shuuhei and Kensei_

* * *

 

Something about the feeling; metal clashed on metal, sparks in the night, the copper-tasted tinge in the air - for a second Hisagi feels brutally dependent on the earth, as if the fire of it is eating the skin of his arms and legs, everything burns and everything hurts and everything is too real and it all reeks of the damned and horror.

When he raises Kazeshini it is by sheer force of will and he is fighting Kensei but he is fighting his own body too; neither are moving without drawing blood first. Tachikaze pierces his shoulder and Hisagi’s eyes involuntarily flick to the wound. Everything hurts, Shuuhei cannot push away the thought, everything hurts. Everything hurts, everything _hurts._ Shuuhei bites his tongue and screams and clutches his cheek, sliced deep, to the bone.

Kensei is laughing in the distorted way he laughs when he is not quite himself but not quite the hollow either. Shuuhei revolts against them both. Shuuhei’s senses are always on high alert and he is always afraid. Something about the way they feel … Shuuhei cannot stop thinking, they could kill him. Together or alone, if he is not what they want, they could kill him. Shuuhei is scared of death, he hasn’t learned how to embrace it yet, even after all of these years. It looms over his bed at night and haunts him like a shadow, like kazeshini.

Desperate, Shuuhei throws his arms up in defense and Kensei strikes at him, cuts his forearm and looks about ready to deliver another blow but stops, suddenly. The mask dissolves like dust away from his face and his eyes are earnest and serious.

Shuuhei sinks to his knees, clutches his face in his hands and tries to hide the pain but everything Shuuhei is is written in the ache of inadequacy and fear and he feels pathetically inept.

“Kid?” Kensei grunts.

“I don’t want to die,” says Shuuhei, “I shouldn’t be here, I don’t want to die!”

“I've got you,” Kensei mutters, pulling Shuuhei up by the material of his shoulder. "I've got you." 


	16. Chapter 16

**16\. Sleepy Head**

_Rose and Izuru_

* * *

 

Rose glances across the room at Izuru, who has been sleeping, head down on his desk, tucked into the crook of his elbow, for the better part of the afternoon. With the light of the setting sun casting shadows across his face from the window it’s hard to see the soft purple skin under his eyes, indicative of the previous days or weeks done without, each smooth surface blends into the next and Rose could laugh but it seems ridiculous to do anything other than watch.   
Izuru is the type to pretend to sleep, Rose has discovered. It is the way the world dissolves into sound, the shuffles of paper, small sighs and steady breaths, Izuru is a dangerous observer and an inactive participant so Rose is, least of anything, surprised.

  
Still, it’s refreshing to be on the other side. Rose is also an ardent observer; partly of necessity, mostly of convenience. With Izuru, there’s nothing to do but watch, Izuru initiates all contact.

  
And still, watching will always be more than enough. Izuru is fluidity and functionality and emptiness and beauty. A solid form in the flux of yellow-tinted dusk and Rose smiles because he is honored by the opportunity to be wanted. And Rose smiles because sometimes Izuru makes a sound that is almost a snore.

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not really nsfw, but fair warning for mature themes, all the same!

**17\. Laced in Ivy**

_Izuru and Rose('s Hollow)_

* * *

 

Izuru is a step away from the edge of existence, his face taut with the ideas of inevitably, manifested in hollow cheeks, blackened, under eyes. Rose wraps an arm around his shoulder, pulls him in until he is pressed, flesh against his neck – the most vulnerable area of a person – and hums in a way that vibrates through everything that Izuru is. Izuru closes his eyes because he is tired, so tired, and so unhappy.

  
Rose is the ivy around his bones, willing them to move; even without the muscle tissue. The plant which is living around the decay of a thing once alive, now dead. Rose is the flora in acid washed intestines, freshly placed in dirt, preserving them like art. Rose is the beauty of the third division.  
Izuru is the essence of the third division.

  
Izuru can move his fingers, hands, arms, torso, move like a marionette – but he is no longer a puppet.  
When he misses Gin it is the human ache alone, the knowledge that things are idyllic in the past tense; Izuru knows and accepts and aches and lets it consume him in the way embarrassing memory consumes a person’s last thoughts before unconscious bitter, restless, sleep. It’s okay, Izuru thinks, to be locked in the past - with the mind - as long as the body is intertwined with the thorns of the rose bush, a better person, willing the body forward.

  
“Izuru,” hums Rose, hollow at the brink of release, arms wrapped around his shoulders, again: “Izuru.”

  
Izuru bites down hard on his collar bone, the skin soft, Rose exhales like he’s just inhaled something succulent, hesitant to let it go.  
“Izuru,” he hums again, and Izuru wants it to bleed, wants to wreck something which is pleasant and kind, wants to know that he is as horrible as, at times, he feels, but Rose won’t. let. him.

  
He is too patient, too understanding. Izuru bites hard, leaves marks, draws blood.

  
“Does it help,” asks Rose, voice distorted by the hollow and he is becoming grotesque, which is what Izuru wants.

  
“Not even a little,” he says, and goes for the neck this time, wants the hollow, wants the pale white of a monster, the man is a useless thing here, for someone who feels wrong and wants to be punished for it.

  
“Izuru,” growls the hollow, and pleads Rose in the distant past, “Izuru,” they say together.

  
“Captain,” says Izuru, “I’m sorry,” even when he isn’t; and is tender on Rose’s throat until it bruises and the captain is more monster than man, feeling more than perceiving, it is the hollow that will hurt Izuru, which is what he wants. Rose, pure in his intentions, the vine weaved between his bones, begging him, please, to place one foot before the other, hoping one day, he might stand again.

  
Izuru couldn’t care less to stand, he wants to be buried, and never thought of again.

  
“Come and get me,” smiles Izuru, against the hollow throat.

  
“Izuru,” says the hollow.


	18. Chapter 18

**18\. Cupid**

_Rangiku and Nanao; Izuru and Rose; Shuuhei and Kensei; Momo and Shinji._

_Valentine's Day special_

* * *

 

For Rangiku, it is an act of misrepresentation; of false comfort - to give a giggle with an invitation so no one will deny her, though no one has ever denied her really; she is too good and too lively in her entirety and Shuuhei blushes when she talks to him, says okay too quickly, eyes flickering to his captain, who will get an invitation in his own time. Don’t worry, Shuuhei. And Izuru’s lips quirk up in the corners, a knowing glint in his eye. Even Nanao, who must deal with captain Kyoraku, the king of over doing it, pushes her glasses up her nose, pretends to be put upon but asks for a time and a location, just in case.

And Rangiku wants her the most.

Valentine’s must be celebrated in the masses. To be alone is depressing, to be in pairs is boring. Rangiku wants the smiles and the drinks and her friends, pressed against her and each other - forget there ever was a war or ever will be one again.

  
Captain Hitsugaya is, understandably, unhappy with her venue choice when half the soul society shows up in their courtyard. She winks prettily and he grumbles and leaves because he is, at heart, still a child and somewhat irritable - but she’s fond of his antics and blows him a secret kiss which will stay with him, even if he never knows it was there.

  
“You’ve out done yourself,” says Nanao, approaching from her left in the evening. She’s carrying chocolates in a small sack and she offers them with a faint smile, disguised as something a little more begrudged. Rangiku wraps her arms around the smaller woman and grins.

  
“Too much pink?” She wonders aloud. The courtyard is pink lights, pink carnations, the music feels pink and the sky is pink with a setting sun, captain Kyoraku is also pink, flittering from one pod of people to the next and Nanao’s eyes narrow on him specifically when she says:

  
“Maybe a little,” but there’s no malice in the words and Rangiku’s laugh bubbles up in her throat like happiness - forget there ever was a snake, too.

  
__

  
The weight is crushing; everlasting, persisting. Izuru accepts it across his shoulders - his face a mask of what has never been indifference but passes as something similar. Strange, a heavy burden, an odd twinge in his lower neck, if he moves the right way it is almost bearable.

  
“Captain,” he breaths. Rose is slumped over him, whispering poetry or lyrics, something, Izuru is not listening, doesn’t think he’d understand if he did. His captain … His captain is attempting to make art of a black canvas and no paint, but there is art in the endeavor of it, he tells Izuru - almost everyday.

  
“Captain, get off,” says Izuru. Izuru does not tell him he is being a burden.

  
Rose places something velvety soft behind his ear, places his hands on Izuru’s shoulders and turns him so that they are look at one another. Izuru always seems to be looking through him, afraid to gaze at the world as if it is a solid thing, something capable of being stable for any period of time. Rose smiles full and free, says ‘lovely,’ runs a hand over Izuru’s neck and hopes that he will leave the flower behind his ear for just a moment more.

  
__

  
Shuuhei stays way the hell away from Captain Muguruma, who looks uncomfortable and oddly displaced in the soft atmosphere of a holiday devoted to love.

Instead he sits on a bench on the far edges of the courtyard, where few people linger, and wonders what he’ll write in tomorrow’s paper. And let’s his mind wander to his captain, and tries to pretend that if he can keep his face passively blank, maybe he’ll feel less guilty about the way he is envious of the affection his captain has never given him.

  
Captain Muguruma eventually wanders to him. Sits down heavily and mutters, almost to himself: “Shit, why am I here…”

  
Shuuhei’s laughs at the absurdity, and the moment. Kensei chuckles, too.

  
__

  
“Captain Hiraiko,” Momo smiles, stopping Shinji at the entrance of the tenth. She gives him a flower and some chocolates. “I meant to give them to you at the office, but the chocolates were still too soft, earlier.” Shinji grins, turns away from the tenth, wraps an arm around her’s.  
“We should eat them together!” He decides. Momo nods and neither of them even make it through the threshold.

  
__

  
“I think it’s going well,” Nanao observes, legs tucked beneath her on the ground. She stares forward, into the party, but her words are directed to Rangiku, whose head rests in her lap.

  
“I’ve never thrown a bad party in my life,” Rangiku grins, letting out a laugh. Nanao’s eyes flicker down to her.

  
“I know that,” she says, and just barely smiles.


	19. Chapter 19

**19\. Inside Jokes**

_Izuru and Shuuhei_

* * *

 

The memories come back like ashes on the battle field; down, down, down, he’s drowning in it - red, the cooper-tainted after taste, and metallic smell of it. Shuuhei gags and his eyes shift. He tries to remember something real, something new because dreams, like all other things, pass away. It’s the dealing with it, that’s the hard part really; the action, the sword pressed through white bone, tan skin, blind eyes. The sword. The decay. The action was easy, almost.

  
“Hey,” says Izuru, “snap out of it,” says Izuru, “it’s done,” says Izuru, “Shuuhei,” says Izuru, “Shuuhei."

  
It’s not over, they both know, it cycles like the menu screen of a DVD, it never ends, it’s the same sounds, the same smells, the same man murdered a million times.

  
“It’s okay,” says Shuuhei, “I’m okay.”

  
“You’re not,” replies Izuru, his face a mask of indifference, there’s a quip in his tone like its a joke; like it’s funny the way they suffer. It is kind of funny - the way they suffer.

  
Shuuhei chuckles when he sobs. “Pass me the waste basket,” he says, between hysteria, Izuru does, quickly, efficiently, without words, and when Shuuhei throws up it is through laughter and dry, heaving sobs; burst of crumbling self.

  
Sitting on the ground, legs tucked up to his chest, Izuru puts his head atop his knees and his shoulders shake with his own contained laughter, and no sound comes, nothing comes. It’s all nothing.


	20. Chapter 20

**20\. Come Hell and High Water**

_Izuru_

* * *

 

Izuru is tracing the path of veins up his arm, they look like individual rivers; at a junction they break off like spindled streams. A cup of tea is cold on the floor beside him and he can breath deeply and smell bitter leaves, steeped too long. Izuru is tracing the path of veins up his arm.

  
He has given up on keeping his head above the waves; where everything is turbulent and frustrating and pointless. If he holds his breath and sinks below he can have peace and calm and only at the price of his life, which is a fair price, and drowning has never seemed more inviting than in conjunction with conflict.

  
Izuru’s a coward but cowards are clever and Izuru is that, too.

  
Izuru is tracing the path of his veins, testing the pale skin which contains them, with his nails, clipped short to the finger, leaving crescent cuts, breathing quietly through his nose.

  
Blue vessels and red. Come hell. Red; come high water. Blue. Izuru is tracing the path of veins up his arm.


	21. Chapter 21

**21\. Take Me With You**

_Rose and Izuru_

* * *

 

Rose can measure the distance between them in breaths. One breath between the mask and the man, beads of moisture by the mouth, collected in the pores of the bone. It’s hard to think when it’s hard to breathe.

Somewhere, across the water, across the marrow, into the open air, somewhere along the way it gets distorted - not just the voice but the message too, he says “Izuru, take me with you.” His hollow says _Izuru_ a little too desperate.

Izuru fears nothing at all; like marble, but he trembles when Rose touches his arm and when the mask cracks and falls away, condensation splashing against his skin, Izuru’s fingers reach for it desperately, like he is surprised that something so affirming of life as water can be created behind a hollow.

“Dead things still bleed,” says Rose, melodic, “and monsters breathe, too.”

“Captain,” says Izuru, feeling gutted, and gives nothing away.


	22. Chapter 22

**22\. In the Mourning**

_Izuru_

* * *

 

In the morning, Izuru slips out of Rose’s arm, clutched around his stomach. Rose never talks, but kisses him sometimes on his shoulder and then turns away to sleep. Izuru leaves because he doesn’t like the waking up with someone, prefers to do it alone, prefers the space and the silence. Izuru stops by the tea shop on his way home, clad in sleep-ware but at five a.m. no one is awake who cares. In the morning, no one cares.

And everything else is routine, to shower, to put on clothes, to brush his hair and play the role, ready himself for the day.

In the mourning, Izuru can barely lift his body; raise his head - curled into the fetal position in the corner of his twin-sized bed.

In the mourning, everything is gray, the sky is gray, the grass is dead and gray, every body and all their lips and all their pairs of eyes are gray - sunken in and listless.

Izuru holds tight to the warmth of the kiss on his shoulder, of the bed and the sound of rustling fabric where Rose doesn’t look at him, the whole of the action subconscious; where it is soft and filtered yellow.

_Get up,_ thinks Izuru, and so he does.


	23. Chapter 23

**23 - The Artist**

_Rose and Izuru_

* * *

 

Rose knows every crevice, groove, and crack. Rose can run his hands along the walls, feel every fault in them and make a mural of the madness. Rose fancies himself the original architect of the third division; the people therein, but also the design and the character. And maybe that makes him a traitor of the vizards, in a way. Rose is change and Rose is changing circumstance.

“Izuru,” he says, lips turned up. The first rule is to never let Izuru know that the world is ending. As long as it endures, so does the vice captain. Small tricks, thinks Rose, every life has them. “Will you come with me?“

Izuru moves a little too quick, wired by the invitation, says "sorry” a little too sincerely, but the bow is fake and so is his stature, pretending to be interested. Rose is mesmerized by the way people move and the way they think - enchanted by the dissolution. Izuru is humanity in its purest form, right down to the way he flees from the same population.

“That’s alright,” Rose smiles; pictures the same scene, every time - Izuru is there, sitting on a bench, staring out at fog and if he’s not happy, at least he’s everything he could ever be and he’s alive, heart beating, hands sweating, watching smoke drift away. He’s so beautiful, he doesn’t even know it. “Next time.”

“Next time,” echoes Izuru.

“And all the times after,” Rose kiss his hand, his wrist, and turns. Rubs his fingers along the wood-paneled walls and dreams of the next time.


	24. Chapter 24

**24 - Conflict Resolution**  

_Kensei_

* * *

 

Kensei is at war with his hollow - has been at war for years, losing ground every day. In a way, it is liberating to fall, to have time and solitude which is all Kensei wants. These days, he is trying to out run his heart, trying to out will his spirit. Everything is an internal conflict and Kensei … he’s just so damn tired.

Shuuhei is sleeping in the communications building again, the fourth seat keeps a blanket for him now, throws it over his shoulders, says goodnight to the vacant room, the body. The third seat - her name something kind, something good - leaves fruit on Shuuhei’s desk, covers for him in officer meetings. The whole division loves him, protects him, cherishes him. Shuuhei is the blood of the walls, flowing through them all, red. Red.

And Kensei’s not an idiot, he already knew. The hollow couldn’t care less about the division, the man that moves it, it’s why it’ll never truly win. Kensei will kill himself or die for the honor of the 9th. It is his, to protect.

Red; that which lives and lingers. Kensei gets it.


	25. Chapter 25

**25 - Seven**

_Izuru_

* * *

 

Izuru thinks in terms of seven. Seven sins, seven days, seven nights, seven … seven seconds before he wakes up where it feels like seven snakes are slithering up his spine, so he bends his head forward, to expose his neck, and if he were anyone else, he’d be in a position to repent for Wabisuke, who is, in its own shape a seven.

He turns the light on and then back off seven times before he gives up, sits by the door for seven hours. It is the imperfect number. The imperfect sound. He hates how it feels on his tongue, like a hiss. He loves how it feels on his tongue.

One sliver of his sanity dedicated to finding peace, the other six to warring in equal, unequal, confusing nonsense. Seven, Izuru thinks. And thinks. And thinks. And thinks. And thinks. And thinks. And thinks. And then stops thinking.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decompress from the angst of all these ficlets with this quirky AU about Izuru being a dick! ;)

**26 - (AU) Train Ride of Hell**

_Shuuhei and Izuru_

* * *

 

Izuru’s a piece of shit.

  
Shuuhei’s always kind of known; always kind of accepted the fact - Izuru’s a good person, a close friend, caught somewhere between abused youth and pessimistic realist. Not quite a heart of gold, but maybe a heart of steel or iron - stronger metals, built to endure, not necessarily beautiful. Izuru’s a lot of things … And also a piece of shit.

  
When the train pulls to a stop at the next station, right as half the train exits and the space decompressed, right before the next round of passengers has the chance to hop on, Shuuhei rips the headphones from his ears and spins on Izuru. The volume is too loud. They vibrate at his side, and what people are left, still standing, look at Shuuhei and the buzzing earphones like they are both a disturbance, disdain in their eyes.

  
“You’re a piece of shit,” Shuuhei mutters, his ears are ringing, his face is flushed. It’s been ten minutes from the last stop to this one; ten minutes of bodies flush against the other, you cannot push and you cannot move or turn, but Izuru has bony fingers like crane beaks and he can reach into Shuuhei’s bag, increase the volume to max and spend the next ten minutes looking out into the masses with a smirk as thin as a knife’s blade and that same smirk comes back, now. And Shuuhei is haunted by it, but before he can mutter any more obscenities, the next wave of passengers begin to pile on, so Shuuhei retrieves his headphones, turns, and spends the next ten minutes staring down at Izuru with what may have started out as malice, but isn’t anymore.


	27. Chapter 27

**27 - Dancing Queen**

_Momo and Shinji_

* * *

 

“Okay,” says Shinji, grinning, “you just gotta kind of … Waddle.”

“Waddle?” says Momo, her feet are pinned under his, she doesn’t think she can move them at all. She tilts left, tilts right and her feet come off the ground just marginally, Shinji with them.

“Not so hard,” he says, like a question and she shakes her head, giggles a little.

“No, but you’re heavy!” He staggers back like she’s stabbed him, looking hurt, but Momo is unaffected; she’s seen him play every angle, wear every mask. “Too tall, too,” she says, conspiratorially, “and your music isn’t really dance music…” Shinji puts a hand around her shoulder, spins her around, says, somewhat slyly:

“Any music is dance music if you’re dancing to it,” he smiles so large it looks painful, grabs her hands and shimmies. Momo’s not much for dancing, not much for music, really, but when the sax blares through his record player she lets him twirl her again and she supposed he’s probably right.

He has a knack for being probably a lot of things. He’s probably a good captain if he’d do the paper work, and probably a good friend if she let him in. He’s probably a good singer, which he probably does in the shower. He probably doesn’t trust anyone outside of that warehouse, and that’s probably a good idea. He’s probably sizing her up, like she sizes him up; it’s probably involuntary.

“I think she’s gonna hurl,” says Kensei, grabbing Shinji by the shoulders, effectively stopping them both. Momo’s feeling light headed, but it’s less to do with the dancing, she thinks. Kensei looks at both of them disapprovingly.

“Don’t let him distract you,” he warns, face blank, lips a fine line, “then no one will get anything done around here.”

“Just a little fun,” grins Shinji.

“What’s fun?” Kensei replies, his arms crossed over his chest. His face remains unchanged and it takes Momo a full beat to realize he’s made a joke. She laughs in spite of herself, and Kensei’s lip twitches up just marginally.

“Speaking of work …” Momo blushes, and steps around the two men, out of the room. Faintly, behind her, she can hear her captain say:

“You’re the worst.” And it almost sounds like he’s sulking.


	28. Chapter 28

**28 - Yellow**

_Izuru (and Rose)_

* * *

 

Izuru knows; knees tucked up in his sweater, covered in dew. The fog is real but maybe it shouldn’t be, sometimes there are stars, but maybe there shouldn’t be. And every breath of air looks like smoke and every puff from a cigarette looks like breath.

Somewhere, off in the distance, Rose is playing music because he thinks that everyone has gone to bed, or perhaps because he thinks no one has woken up.

And all Izuru can think is that if he were anyone else, he’d enjoy it - and he wonders why he can’t, wonders why everything is hazy, wonders where life goes from here.

It’s the yellow in the leaves, in the teeth, the cusp of the eyes and the hair, the yellow of old weather-worn books, the same yellow at the edge of a sunrise still an hour out. It’s yellow, everything is yellow; everything is yellow and it’s lonely and it sounds like a guitar in the distance.

Izuru laughs, covers his face with a hand, feels cold, and waits for the sun.


	29. Chapter 29

**29 - Old Wounds**

_Shuuhei and Izuru_

* * *

 

Shuuhei is sure the things Tousen said were true; thinks they were fair; Shuuhei is thinking how everyone goes a little slower than they’d like.

He says, “please don’t let me be afraid.” And later: “please know that I love you”

And he says ‘goodbye’ three times before he actually has the courage to leave.

How funny. How funny, and yet, how sad. And when he walked into work three months later it wasn’t like the knife had been pulled from his back, because pulling it would have surely killed him; but it was a little like someone had acknowledged that the knife was there; Izuru had acknowledged that the knife was there; had thought about what to do, had put ice on it, and ointment around it, had said in a voice like air “I can’t fix this, I don’t know how to fix this, we’ll find somebody who can fix this.”

And maybe, thinks Shuuhei, he’ll never unlearn the pain and maybe the scar will always be a grotesque bundle of tissue, but on the back it is almost like a memory, almost like nothing at all - only remembered in the found moments of Izuru’s lips against it, and the nape of his neck and the curves of his sides. Reclaimed skin, and Izuru can have it, Shuuhei never wants to own it again.


	30. Chapter 30

**30\. Mentors and Mediators**

_Kensei, Shuuhei and Izuru_

* * *

 

Kensei’s two-thirds the way to losing his goddamn mind; Shuuhei’s half a bottle from oblivion; Izuru’s making monsters of the patterns in the wall, and befriending them; Rose is MIA.

That’s Saturday.

On Sunday, Kensei sits the kids on a cliff’s edge at midnight, orders them to look up; for the first time in weeks it’s not anything like darkness. The whole sky is bright and alive with the glow of a million stars and billions more just beyond the eye.

And Shuuhei might say something…

“Shut up, Hisagi,” barks Kensei, stopping him. Izuru chuckles, Kensei glares.

The void of the world and every soul therein is lost in the space between planets, galaxies, a breath. Kensei’s two-thirds the man he hopes he’ll one day be; Shuuhei’s half way to okay; Izuru’s making murals of the patterns in the stars; and Rose is still pretending to be MIA.


	31. Chapter 31

**31 - Sparring**

_Rose and Izuru  
_

* * *

 

These things come slowly, even to the patient, and so Rose goes about going about and waits, as he has always waited - as all the vizards wait - for a time of acceptance. Remembering to think lightly of the world, the people who occupy it. Everything is temporary and that makes everything beautiful.

These things come slowly - trust and allowance - so Rose does more dodging than he does attacking. Izuru’s sword is so selfish, Rose realizes, he cannot parry - every blow must be a cutting one, each calculated move to damage or else be weighted down and Rose will not accept that burden, so perhaps he is selfish, too.

When Rose calls the spar it is only because Izuru is more bruises and blood than flesh and Rose holds his tongue and does not apologize.

These things come slowly.


	32. Chapter 32

**32 - Ape in a Tree**

_Renji and Izuru_

* * *

 

Izuru spends his days absent, chained to the third division, buried in ink and blood. Waiting, always waiting, for something and for nothing; he’s walking and sleeping and eating among the living, breathing, good people, living good lives and he feels vial with them and absolutely lost without them. For a moment, and it’s only a brief and fleeting moment, he wonders at the absence of everything – of self and what that means – but everyone is milling about like nothing is the same and it seems a shame to expose himself as the devil lurking among them, not it action, but in suppression; everything is the same, he hasn’t changed at all. He doesn’t know what to do about the over processing images and sounds and memories which blink past his eyes like rapid fire shots in the dark; they’re giving him a headache.

His parents’ graves are clean.

Izuru has fallen into a holding pattern. His potential is stifled under morality and mortality.

“Renji?” He calls out, looks up. There’s a shock of red among the green, green leaves; further up than is safe but Renji’s a reckless heathen at heart and he doesn’t answer, of course he doesn’t answer; he’s asleep.

Renji doesn’t have parents, he’s worked his way from nothing to nothing but this time with a group of people he calls family and the difference is so large you could fill the chasm of it with every lie Izuru has ever told another person.

This time, Izuru throws a pine-cone and Renji tumbles out of the tree like a sack of potatoes, dirt flying up with his impact; looks up at Izuru with eyes too determine, lips too cracked from a thousand smiles; hard earned well deserved.

“Yo,” he says, laying stomach down on the ground, and those eyes are bright, bright and his smile is feral, teeth gleaming white in the sun, bright, Izuru’s got a headache. “Good to see you back in the land of the living.” Izuru’s lips twitch, his mind searching for something it’s lost along the way, an action, a reaction, coming up empty, standing in a dark room, twiddling it’s thumbs - but the lips twitch and it feels … Almost right.

“Is that what this is?” He says. Renji hooks an arm around his calves, looks up to him, the grin spreading, lighthearted and happy, and Renji pulls his legs from under him and he lands on his ass with an ‘oof’ he doesn’t mean to let out.

“Lighten up,” says Renji, “you’ve got me.” There’s a promise in those words, like Renji thinks they’re fighting the same fight - to prove their worth, to break their shackles. Their not, not even close, if Renji’s fight is a battle field with two forces warring, Izuru’s playing chess through the bars of a prison against the man who put him there. Every move calculated so that he can’t remember if the bonds are real or forged for survival. Maybe they’re both or maybe he’s a monster.

Renji, talented, determined, loyal. Loyal. Loyal.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Says Izuru, and before Renji can bark back like the dog he clearly is, Izuru leans forward, forges on, moves the Bishop, and kisses him in the crease of his brow, at the peak of the emptiness between the tattoos which rest there.


	33. Laceration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Izuru is both the wound and the wounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t usually put a note before the story but in this case it is necessary. Let me preface the coming fanfic by saying that a large majority of the information about choking which follows is not personal experience, but obtain by doing a light internet search. Let me repeat: a LIGHT internet search. I would not advice letting this fic determine whether you want to partake in choking nor would I advice using it as a reference for how to go about doing it if you decide you want to. Please be informed when/if you decide to partake in dangerous forms of intimacy!
> 
>  
> 
> Originally posted as a stand alone, added to this collection in an effort to do some clean up.

**33\. Laceration**

_Izuru and Shuuhei_

* * *

 

It is, perhaps, a sickness of the mind. A puncture in the cavity of the heart. Something just a little odd, which plagues Izuru like a shadow. Like a fog swirling in his throat, tantalizing, he can barely breathe around it, kind of wishes he couldn’t.

When Shuuhei wraps his arms around Izuru’s neck, kisses him soundly on the lips, has him up against the wall, he just wants to _feel_. When Izuru places his hands over Shuuhei’s and holds them at his throat, he’s hoping the feeling will stop.

And Shuuhei knows the game, just the right amount of pressure, they’ve done it a couple of times. They have a system. 

Izuru will drop his hands when he wants him to stop, Shuuhei _knows_ because Shuuhei has _faith_ in Izuru. He laces his fingers at the top of the other man’s spine, pushes his thumbs into the arteries on the sides of Izuru’s neck. Izuru will probably have him hold it for three second, Shuuhei knows it shouldn’t be more than five; but when four seconds have passed, Izuru’s eyes are shaking slightly, he’s looking at nothing now and yet still hasn’t dropped his hands from where they’re gripping at Shuuhei’s. At five seconds Shuuhei goes to retreat but Izuru squeezes, all of his will on the action alone, holding Shuuhei on sheer power of will and short nails that still managed to tear the flesh just a bit. At six seconds Shuuhei jerks back and it’s only because Izuru has passed out and no longer has the power, nor the mind, to restrain him. Shuuhei grabs him before he hits the ground and sinks down beside him. Izuru blinks twice.

  
Izuru doesn’t want to die, not really. He’s just not quite sure how to live. Perhaps there’s no motive … Shuuhei gets up and goes to work and buries himself in paper until his mind is empty of his own words and filled with someone else’s, Renji wants to beat someone, wants to protect someone, Momo clings to life as if something precious will surely bloom from it one day. Izuru … Izuru looks for new ways to punish himself for failing to live properly, for believing he ever once could. In a way, he feels pointless — but mostly he is numb. 

Shuuhei is looking at him with such unrestrained concern that Izuru cannot help but to let a smirk curl at the tips of his lips.

Shuuhei understands, but maybe he also doesn’t; Izuru thinks he hears him whisper “what the fuck” fearfully. It attempts to will Izuru out of the haze of his own almost-existence … but doesn’t really succeed.

He hears himself say “again.”

And he knows (and Shuuhei knows) that to do so would surly kill them both.


	34. Luminous

**Luminous**

_Rangiku and Nanao_

* * *

 

Sometimes Rangiku thinks of Nanao as she drifts to sleep and the following day she can think of nothing else. In that way, Nanao’s kind of like gum, in a very loose sense, she’s a sticky situation. Rangiku understands there’s a lot of things Nanao isn’t. A flirt, for one, interested in women, for another. Which is fine – Rangiku’s certain that people in general aren’t really Nanao’s cup of tea. She’s proper and isolated and she talks, in any real depth, to a number of people which can be counted on fingers and toes … or just fingers. Rangiku has tried to count them a couple times: Momo, Shunsui, herself … who else, maybe Ukitake-taichou? She is an enigma, and to those who haven’t taken the time to get to know her, she’s uninteresting. Rangiku prides herself on exploiting the best parts of people. She wants to monopolize Nanao’s attention, she often has to fight Shunsui to do it. Shunsui sees it, too, the light in her – like luminescent plants. She doesn’t shine brightly, in the daylight, she’s invisible. But at night (and night really is Nanao’s element) she’s radiated beauty, new and different and a little scary in her utter foreignness. At night, sometimes Rangiku thinks of Nanao, and for hours she can think of nothing else.

Rangiku smiles behind her cup and Shunsui catches it, even in his drunkenness. He raises an eyebrow in questioning, but Rangiku’s not ready to share. Not yet, maybe not ever. She watches Nanao outside the bar window as she walks, maybe to work for overtime. Probably she’s just taking a walk. She does that, she tells Rangiku, sometimes she can’t sleep. Rangiku downs the last of her drink and then slams it down, grinning too big at Shunsui.

“Something’s come up!” she yells; the entire bar turns to her. She’s drunk, she likes it. Shunsui pouts across from her.

“The night is still so young,” he whines. Rangiku winks at him.

“Yeah, but you’re not,” she jokes, Shunsui looks wounded but age really doesn’t matter in soul society. Rangiku walks past him, she runs her hand across his shoulders and breaths behind his ear, “don’t worry, Shunsui-taichou, some women like that,” and then she flits out of the sleazy bar.

Nanao sense she’s there before Rangiku can fully take advantage of it, but she runs behind the smaller woman anyway and throws her arms over her neck in a sloppy hug.

“Good evening, Rangiku-san,” says Nanao, she twists halfheartedly out of the embrace. Rangiku lets her go freely, but loops her arm through Nanao’s and smiles down at her. They walk aimlessly forward.

“Hello Nana-oo-chan~” Rangiku sings, happy.


	35. Chapter 35

**35\. A Moment**

_Shuuhei and Izuru_

* * *

 

“And sometimes,” says Shuuhei in a voice like smoke and ash, “you just let it go.”

  
Their backs to the cold ground, Izuru has to turn his head in the grass to see the way Shuuhei clenches his fist to the dark night sky and then opens it so gently, so fluidly, Izuru almost forgets for a second that Kazeshini is lurking somewhere under that flesh, waiting for a moment - just a moment.

  
Izuru takes a puff from his cigarette, holds it in for an instant - this is the killing thing, the inability to move forward, to release that which should not be contained - and then he exhales and the gray wisps mingle in the atmosphere and nothing is gained, but nothing is lost, either.  
It’s just an exchange of perspective. Once he was the cheek which endured the awful things, and now he’s the smoke and the whole world is black on blue on stars in the sky like pen-prick pixels dotted on a canvas in his captain’s office.

  
“Just let it go,” Izuru echoes. Shuuhei chuckles beside him, turns on his side, props his head up and stares; Izuru can feel it on the side of his face and he smirks around the bud, rubs his cheek, is almost embarrassed but not quite.

  
It always occurred to him, but was never expressed - there’s a real moment of genuine joy for Shuuhei’s existence. For the fight and the late night and the way both of them skirt around their thoughts with carefully selected words. They are masters of language manipulation and of each other, in a way.

  
“I’m glad that you’re here,” says Shuuhei, and Izuru does not miss the implications


End file.
